Light and Darkness on Presidents Day

The holiday popularly known as Presidents Day began as a celebration of George Washington’s Birthday, but with the Washington-Lincoln Recognition Act of 2001 (HR 420), we recognize all the presidents who have led our nation throughout our history. Unfortunately, we currently have an empty chair in the White House, so in this post, we’re once again forced to look to the past.

This year, we’ve chosen to highlight a portion of a speech by President Dwight D Eisenhower from October 24, 1954 marking the 75th Anniversary of the Incandescent Lamp. Text from the speech is courtesy of our friend, Bill Federer’s American Minute.

“IN GOD WE TRUST.” Often have we heard the words of this wonderful American motto. Let us make sure that familiarity has not made them meaningless for us. We carry the torch of freedom as a sacred trust for all mankind. We do not believe that God intended the light that He created to be put out by men.

The term “light” is used in many contexts in the Bible, beginning with the ordinary physical sense. Light was the first thing God created after the heavens and earth (Gn 1:3). Yet, its primary use is in the figurative, allegorical or metaphorical senses to portray spiritual realities. The late Dr Henry Morris, who established the Institute for Creation Research, notes

Light is the most fundamental and important form of energy, and energy includes every phenomenon in the physical universe. It is appropriate for John to affirm that God is light, because everything created must reflect the character of its Creator. The term “light,” therefore, has come to be applied not only to light in the physical sense, but also to that which is true in the intellectual realm, and holy in the moral realm as well. In addition, the term is often used in opposition to dark or darkness as symbolizing good and evil. We see this in the Apostle John’s application to God Himself, “This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 Jn 1:5).

Light is used to express knowledge, The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God (2Cor 4:4, see also Job 12:22 and Ps 119:130). Light and dark are also used to express morality or lack of, as illustrated by the Prophet Isaiah, Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness (Is 5:20). Light can even symbolize eternal life itself. Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (Jn 8:12).

It is easy to see that, while much of the church sleeps and even looks to the government to assume part of her responsibilities, our country's “leaders” continue their quest to eliminate the spiritual light from our nation, replacing it with their own fundamental change. We could even say that our physical light is being dimmed as well. Radical environmental policies are condemning many to sickness or even death by depriving the poor of basic needs such as inexpensive utilities necessary for healthy food and clean water. Thus, please pray that God would again shed His Light on our once great nation. We should, like Job, long for the days when God watched over us; when His lamp shone on our head and by His light, we walked confidently through the darkness (Job 29:2-3).

Returning to Eisenhower’s speech, the former president also addressed the relation between faith and freedom:

Atheism substitutes men for the Supreme Creator and this leads inevitably to domination and dictatorship. But we believe - and it is because we believe that God intends all men to be free and equal that we demand free government.

Our Government is servant, not master, our chosen representatives are our equals, not our czars or commissars. We must jealously guard our foundation in faith.

For on it rests the ability of the American individual to live and thrive in this blessed land - and to be able to help other less fortunate people to achieve freedom and individual opportunity. These we take for granted, but to others they are often only a wistful dream.

Today, we see that Eisenhower’s prophetical words have been ignored or forgotten. As the current administration continues to drive God from our country, it is inevitable that American’s freedoms are also sliding away.

Still, we can be confident that God is in control. He makes nations great, and destroys them; he enlarges nations, and disperses them (Job 12:23). Therefore, we must also continue to pray that God will turn the hearts of our nation back to Him, with the assurance that He alone controls the course of world events (Dan 2:21).

A Good Earth Steward

This past week, while I continue to recover from bronchitis, the world celebrated “Earth Day 2013”. As Christians, we should celebrate God’s creation, remembering the One who not only created, but continues to sustain all things according to His perfect plan. We are also to be good stewards of the creation according to His word.

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. (Gen 1:26-28,31)

So, the mission of humans, who are created in the image of God, is to responsibly exercise dominion over the earth. Unfortunately, the radical Green environmental movement has completely flipped these commands. Rooted in pagan religion (Animism, Pantheism etc), Eco-Utopianism, socialist economics, globalism, Eugenics and other unbiblical beliefs and agendas, this movement seeks to fundamentally transform our entire society, culture, and traditional values.

The results? The creation, rather than the Creator is now the object of worship. Man has become subject to nature. Unborn human children can be legally murdered, but don’t try this with a tortoise egg. Many want humans eliminated altogether so that the earth can return to her “natural” state. We’ll elaborate further on this movement in other articles, but we’d like to return to our subject of being a good steward of the creation.

One of the leading defenders of the biblical worldview of creation is the Cornwall Alliance, a coalition of theologians, religious leaders, scientists, and other scholarly experts founded by our friend, Dr E Calvin Beisner. We received an email from Dr Beisner this week that contained an excerpt from a lecture given by his good friend, Dr Clyde Kilby, a long-time English professor at Wheaton College. Dr Kilby concluded a 1976 lecture with suggestions meant to provide or renew a sense of amazement at what it means to be alive in this world:

1. At least once every day I shall look steadily up at the sky and remember that I, a consciousness with a conscience, am on a planet traveling in space with wonderfully mysterious things above and about me.

2. Instead of the accustomed idea of a mindless and endless evolutionary change to which we can neither add nor subtract, I shall suppose the universe guided by an Intelligence which, as Aristotle said of Greek drama, requires a beginning, a middle, and an end. I think this will save me from the cynicism expressed by Bertrand Russell before his death when he said: "There is darkness without, and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendor, no vastness anywhere, only triviality for a moment, and then nothing."

3. I shall not fall into the falsehood that this day, or any day, is merely another ambiguous and plodding twenty-four hours, but rather a unique event, filled, if I so wish, with worthy potentialities. I shall not be fool enough to suppose that trouble and pain are wholly evil parentheses in my existence, but just as likely ladders to be climbed toward moral and spiritual manhood.

4. I shall not turn my life into a thin, straight line which prefers abstractions to reality. I shall know what I am doing when I abstract, which of course I shall often have to do.

5. I shall not demean my own uniqueness by envy of others. I shall stop boring into myself to discover what psychological or social categories I might belong to. Mostly I shall simply forget about myself and do my work.

6. I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what Lewis calls their "divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic" existence.

7. I shall sometimes look back at the freshness of vision I had in childhood and try, at least for a little while, to be, in the words of Lewis Carroll, the "child of the pure unclouded brow, and dreaming eyes of wonder."

8. I shall follow Darwin's advice and turn frequently to imaginative things such as good literature and good music, preferably, as Lewis suggests, an old book and timeless music.

9. I shall not allow the devilish onrush of this century to usurp all my energies but will instead, as Charles Williams suggested, "fulfill the moment as the moment." I shall try to live well just now because the only time that exists is now.

10. Even if I turn out to be wrong, I shall bet my life on the assumption that this world is not idiotic, neither run by an absentee landlord, but that today, this very day, some stroke is being added to the cosmic canvas that in due course I shall understand with joy as a stroke made by the architect who calls himself Alpha and Omega.

We’d like to invite our readers to join us in praying for and supporting the Cornwall Alliance and their faithful work. Thank you and God bless.

Democide: Death by Liberalism

We’ve always admitted that many liberal ideas sound good, in a religious pie-in-the-sky utopian sort of way. The problem is that, in almost every case, they simply don’t work in the real world, and some are actually dangerous or, in some cases, even deadly.

A couple of week ago, the American Thinker featured an article that highlighted a new book by JR Dunn entitled Death by Liberalism - The Fatal Outcome of Well-Meaning Liberal Policies. In the book, Mr Dunn highlights several liberal ideas going back to our country’s founding and describes their deadly impact on people and society. Relying on well-established facts, Mr Dunn details the liberal’s approach to fuel-efficient cars, crime, abortion, environmentalism, banning of DDT, and others, then traces their disastrous and deadly results.

This is not the first publication that has attempted to itemize some of these tragedies. Among others, John Hawkins wrote in a 2007 Townhall article entitled Liberal emotion vs. Conservative logic:

Why don't they learn anything from failed liberal policies? Because there is nothing underpinning them other than feelings and so even when they don't work, their good intentions are treated, by other liberals at least, as more important than the results of their actions.

Just to name one example of many, look at Vietnam. South Vietnam was policing its own country and holding off aggression from the North with the help of the United States. But, people get hurt in wars, so wars are bad. As a result of thinking that went no deeper than that, liberals in Congress cut off the aid and air support we promised the South Vietnamese. The result?

The conquest of South Vietnam, a holocaust in Cambodia, millions dead and in prison camps, another million boat people, a crisis of confidence in America, and our country's reputation around the world was left in tatters, which led to a revolution in Nicaragua, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and a lack of faith in the U.S. military which wasn't truly restored until Operation Desert Storm.

So, we're talking about one of the most shameful and damaging mistakes in American history. Yet, the left is pushing to do the same thing in Iraq, despite the fact that catastrophic consequences would surely also follow a U.S. retreat in that country.

But, this isn't just about foreign policy. Look at Lyndon Johnson's "war on poverty," which did nothing to reduce the poverty rate despite the trillions that were spent; however, it did help drive the illegitimacy rate among black Americans from 22 percent in 1960 to 70% in 2005.

You could go on and on with these sort of examples -- rent control, which causes housing shortages, the minimum wage, which costs poor people jobs, the liberal insistence on putting “making nice at the U.N.” above looking out for American interests. That's what happens when you make decisions based on emotion and wanting people to like you, rather than using logic and doing the right thing.

This coming Wednesday will mark the eighth anniversary of the space shuttle Columbia disaster, when the shuttle broke apart as it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard. To this day, a primary cause has been virtually ignored by the media. As reported in Front Page Magazine (August 2003):

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, better known as NASA, said in July that it had found the "smoking gun" that caused the space shuttle Columbia to break apart as it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on Feb. 1: a piece of foam that had peeled off the external fuel tank and struck the shuttle's wing 1 minute and 22 seconds after liftoff.

But many experts looking at the tragedy that killed seven astronauts say there is a deeper cause. They say that the metaphorical smoking gun should be painted green.

Because of demands that the agency help to front for environmentalism, and under pressure from the Clinton-Gore administration's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) led by Carol Browner, NASA had stopped using Freon, a fluorocarbon that greens claim damages the ozone layer, in its thermal-insulating foam. NASA found in 1997 after the first launch with the politically correct substitute that the Freon-free foam had destroyed nearly 11 times as many of the shuttle's ceramic tiles as had the foam containing Freon. The politicized foam was less sticky and more brittle under extreme temperatures. But apparently little or nothing was done to resist the environmentalist politicians.

"It was at least a contributing factor, if not a major factor," says Hannes Hacker, an aerospace engineer and former flight controller at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston who is affiliated with the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. Hacker tells Insight: "The risk of a piece of debris falling off and causing significant damage to the space shuttle's thermal-protection system was [more than] 10 times greater with the new material than with the old material."

The ditch alongside the road throughout history is littered with failed liberal ideas. While many liberals subscribe to the eugenics movement, many others are actually well-meaning with their ideas. Unfortunately, very few actually gauge the results of their ideas. One of their favorite themes is “We must look to the future, not to the past”, and herein is one of their greatest failures. We must look to the future, but we must not forget the lessons of the past. Otherwise, we continue to repeat the same unsuccessful and often deadly ideas.